Racists co-opted the American flag as well. Do you not fly the American flag?
Today in Fascism
- Thread starter Hüsker Dü
- Start date
Not for me personally.
Happened again
SILVER ELITE
got it - but generally speaking, you agree that a movement that is endorsed by the majority of the "left" is blatantly anti semitic...very open about it, even members of congress. It's a testament to their organizational skill that that same pop up tents, banners, t-shirts are so similar.
Nice of the Pedophile Potato to start giving a shit about the problem he created some 5 months until election day.
Hüsker Dü
DA
Do you feel those people, attitudes and legacy disappeared long ago? . . . reminds me of right wingers who deny the Southern Strategy as if all those confederate sympathizers just disappeared and kind gentle Southerners took their place. “THEY WERE ALL DEMOCRATS!!!! THEY’RE RESPONSIBLE!!!” Right crush?
Happened again
SILVER ELITE
you are ridiculous.
Hüsker Dü
DA
So you can’t keep up?
Your opinion is noted.
I didn't think it disappeared, but I thought it only survived in fringe hate groups. I had no idea Jew hate was so pervasive on college campuses. Shocked actually.
That is pretty cringey.
I'd still rather see that vs a bunch of protesters burning the flag and stomping on it.
Once again you side-step the question. Lots of people have LE family members. Just because you do too doesn't mean a thing. But we can see you don't support them. Read post #7133 again and try to give an actual answer.
kickingandscreaming
PREMIER
Why Democrats Put Fauci Above Science
Deference to authority is anathema to democracy
ALEX GUTENTAG AND MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER
JUN 4
Dr. Anthony Fauci, who served as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) and as Chief Medical Advisor to President Biden during Covid-19, today testified to Congress about Covid vaccines and Covid’s origin.
"The first iteration of vaccines did have an effect — not 100%, not a high effect — they did prevent infection, and subsequently, obviously, transmission,” Fauci said. “However, it's important to point out something that we did not know early on that became evident as the months went by: the durability of protection against infection, and hence, the transmission was relatively limited."
But there was never definitive evidence that the vaccines would prevent transmission. In December 2020, the FDA determined that “data are not available to make a determination about how long the vaccine will provide protection, nor is there evidence that the vaccine prevents transmission of SARS-CoV-2 from person to person.”
The CDC in 2020 and 2021 stated that protection would wear off, that the evidence was unclear, and that the data were limited, noted data analyst Kelley K during the hearing.
When Fauci said in May 2021 that a vaccinated person would become a “dead end to the virus,” he was repeating a political talking point and not accurately representing the science. Claiming vaccination would prevent spread was a strategy to increase vaccine uptake among young, healthy people who were not vulnerable to severe COVID outcomes.
In other words, the science had not been “settled,” but Fauci and other public health leaders chose to espouse a noble lie to encourage vaccination.
To his credit, Fauci testified before Congress today and sat for many hours of a transcribed interview. But Fauci also implied that investigating his role put him at risk. “Every time someone gets up and says I'm responsible for the death of people throughout the world,” he emphasized, “the death threats go up.”
We unreservedly condemn any threats Fauci and his family may have received. It is illegal to threaten people with death or physical violence, as it should be. At the same time, we must be free to discuss Fauci’s role in funding the laboratory research to make coronaviruses more infectious, known as “gain-of-function research,” without fear of being accused of inciting violence against Fauci or his family members.
It would be an abuse of power to suggest that any effort to hold Fauci accountable is equivalent to threatening him or his family. The responsibility for making threats lies with the person making them and not with those whose statements have ostensibly influenced them.
And yet many Democrats repeatedly suggested that there was something sinister and dangerous about criticisms of Fauci for his role in shaping the US response to the pandemic as well as his role advocating for and funding the kinds of biomedical research that may have caused it. And Democrats repeatedly referred to the idea that US taxpayer dollars funded the research that resulted in the creation of SARS-CoV-2 a “conspiracy theory.”
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-CA): The investigation of Dr Fauci shows he is an honorable public servant who has devoted his entire career to the public health and the public interest. And he is not a comic book supervillain. He did not fund research to create the Cove in 19 pandemic. He did not lie to Congress about gain of function research in Wuhan, and he did not organize a lab leak suppression campaign today.
But it’s not a conspiracy theory. A few hours before Fauci testified, The New York Times, the most important newspaper for Democrats, published a complete and graphics-heavy case for the lab leak theory of Covid-19’s origin.
A “growing volume of evidence — gleaned from public records released under the Freedom of Information Act, digital sleuthing through online databases, scientific papers analyzing the virus and its spread, and leaks from within the U.S. government — suggests that the pandemic most likely occurred because a virus escaped from a research lab in Wuhan, China,” wrote Alina Chan, who coauthored the 2021 book, Viral, with Matt Ridley, in the Times.
In today’s hearing, Fauci insisted that he did not fund risky gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China. The research his agency funded, he claimed, was not technically gain-of-function under the regulatory definition set by something called “The Guidelines on Potential Pandemic Pathogens Care and Oversight (P3CO).”
Rep. Raul Ruiz (D-CA): Dr. Fauci, according to the regulatory definitions, for example, in P3CO, that NIH applied to proposed research, did NIH ever fund gain of function research in Wuhan, China?
Fauci: As you said, Congressman Ruiz, according to the regulatory and operative definition of P3CO, the NIH did not fund gain of function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
But Fauci and Francis Collins, the former head of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), spent years seeking to weaken oversight of such research. In 2011, after the NIH biosecurity board unanimously recommended that certain dangerous gain-of-function bird flu research not be published, Fauci and Collins published an opinion piece called “A flu virus risk worth taking” in the Washington Post, arguing that the benefits of this research outweighed the potential for a pandemic.
<cont.>
Deference to authority is anathema to democracy
ALEX GUTENTAG AND MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER
JUN 4
Dr. Anthony Fauci, who served as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) and as Chief Medical Advisor to President Biden during Covid-19, today testified to Congress about Covid vaccines and Covid’s origin.
"The first iteration of vaccines did have an effect — not 100%, not a high effect — they did prevent infection, and subsequently, obviously, transmission,” Fauci said. “However, it's important to point out something that we did not know early on that became evident as the months went by: the durability of protection against infection, and hence, the transmission was relatively limited."
But there was never definitive evidence that the vaccines would prevent transmission. In December 2020, the FDA determined that “data are not available to make a determination about how long the vaccine will provide protection, nor is there evidence that the vaccine prevents transmission of SARS-CoV-2 from person to person.”
The CDC in 2020 and 2021 stated that protection would wear off, that the evidence was unclear, and that the data were limited, noted data analyst Kelley K during the hearing.
When Fauci said in May 2021 that a vaccinated person would become a “dead end to the virus,” he was repeating a political talking point and not accurately representing the science. Claiming vaccination would prevent spread was a strategy to increase vaccine uptake among young, healthy people who were not vulnerable to severe COVID outcomes.
In other words, the science had not been “settled,” but Fauci and other public health leaders chose to espouse a noble lie to encourage vaccination.
To his credit, Fauci testified before Congress today and sat for many hours of a transcribed interview. But Fauci also implied that investigating his role put him at risk. “Every time someone gets up and says I'm responsible for the death of people throughout the world,” he emphasized, “the death threats go up.”
We unreservedly condemn any threats Fauci and his family may have received. It is illegal to threaten people with death or physical violence, as it should be. At the same time, we must be free to discuss Fauci’s role in funding the laboratory research to make coronaviruses more infectious, known as “gain-of-function research,” without fear of being accused of inciting violence against Fauci or his family members.
It would be an abuse of power to suggest that any effort to hold Fauci accountable is equivalent to threatening him or his family. The responsibility for making threats lies with the person making them and not with those whose statements have ostensibly influenced them.
And yet many Democrats repeatedly suggested that there was something sinister and dangerous about criticisms of Fauci for his role in shaping the US response to the pandemic as well as his role advocating for and funding the kinds of biomedical research that may have caused it. And Democrats repeatedly referred to the idea that US taxpayer dollars funded the research that resulted in the creation of SARS-CoV-2 a “conspiracy theory.”
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-CA): The investigation of Dr Fauci shows he is an honorable public servant who has devoted his entire career to the public health and the public interest. And he is not a comic book supervillain. He did not fund research to create the Cove in 19 pandemic. He did not lie to Congress about gain of function research in Wuhan, and he did not organize a lab leak suppression campaign today.
But it’s not a conspiracy theory. A few hours before Fauci testified, The New York Times, the most important newspaper for Democrats, published a complete and graphics-heavy case for the lab leak theory of Covid-19’s origin.
A “growing volume of evidence — gleaned from public records released under the Freedom of Information Act, digital sleuthing through online databases, scientific papers analyzing the virus and its spread, and leaks from within the U.S. government — suggests that the pandemic most likely occurred because a virus escaped from a research lab in Wuhan, China,” wrote Alina Chan, who coauthored the 2021 book, Viral, with Matt Ridley, in the Times.
In today’s hearing, Fauci insisted that he did not fund risky gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China. The research his agency funded, he claimed, was not technically gain-of-function under the regulatory definition set by something called “The Guidelines on Potential Pandemic Pathogens Care and Oversight (P3CO).”
Rep. Raul Ruiz (D-CA): Dr. Fauci, according to the regulatory definitions, for example, in P3CO, that NIH applied to proposed research, did NIH ever fund gain of function research in Wuhan, China?
Fauci: As you said, Congressman Ruiz, according to the regulatory and operative definition of P3CO, the NIH did not fund gain of function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
But Fauci and Francis Collins, the former head of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), spent years seeking to weaken oversight of such research. In 2011, after the NIH biosecurity board unanimously recommended that certain dangerous gain-of-function bird flu research not be published, Fauci and Collins published an opinion piece called “A flu virus risk worth taking” in the Washington Post, arguing that the benefits of this research outweighed the potential for a pandemic.
<cont.>
kickingandscreaming
PREMIER
<page 2>
The following year, 2012, NIH’s biosecurity board signed non-disclosure agreements and met with Fauci and Collins. The board, apparently under pressure from Fauci and Collins, then revised its previous recommendation to publish the risky bird flu research.
According to Fauci and Democrats in Congress, NIH’s grant to EcoHealth Alliance did not fall under P3CO guidelines because it was not anticipated to increase a pathogen’s danger to humans, specifically.
But in emails, NIH staff expressed their concerns about EcoHealth Alliance’s work creating hybrid “chimera” MERS and SARS viruses, in order to increase their infectiousness, in 2016. NIH staff pointed out that there was a moratorium placed on that research in 2014.
Peter Daszak, the president of the EcoHealth Alliance, persuaded NIH staff to concede to a research threshold, saying EcoHealth would halt its research if the chimeras had enhanced viral growth 10 times that of the original viruses.
After reaching an agreement with NIH, Daszak specifically referred to this work as gain-of-function, writing, “This is terrific! We are very happy to hear that our Gain of Function research funding pause has been lifted. Cheers, Peter.”
Then, in 2018, EcoHealth went on to seemingly violate its agreement by producing a chimeric virus with a viral load 10,000 times greater than the original virus.
As such, Fauci, his colleagues, and the Democrats were playing word games, redefining what they mean by gain-of-function research in ways that allowed them to deny responsibility.
And that’s not all.
After the Obama administration had established a Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) committee to review proposed gain-of-function projects before the NIH could approve them, Fauci and Collins knowingly sought to make changes to NIH policy in order to allow funding for riskier gain-of-function experiments. These changes included removing the committee’s ability to block projects and limiting the type of projects the committee could review.
In his testimony, Fauci misrepresented the scientific possibility that NIH funding is associated with the Covid-19 outbreak, as well as his role in the “Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2” paper, which infamously and misleadingly, claimed that, “Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus.”
But consider how, in 2018, EcoHealth Alliance applied for a grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for a project called “DEFUSE” that would involve Shi Zhengli’s lab group at WIV and Ralph Bari
c’s lab at the University of North Carolina (UNC).
Documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act reveal that the features of SARS-CoV-2 closely resemble the work described in EcoHealth Alliance’s proposal.
On February 1, 2020, Fauci and Collins
held a meeting called “Coronavirus sequence comparison” with other scientists to compare the spike proteins of SARS-CoV-2 and RaTG13, its closest genetic relative which the NIH-funded Wuhan lab discovered. This meeting would lead to the “Proximal Origin” paper.
In the hearing, Fauci downplayed his role.
Majority Counsel Mitch Benzine:
Did Dr. Anderson send you drafts to review?
Fauci:
He sent drafts, but I'm going to jump ahead of you if I might dribble around. I did not edit it. That was mentioned by a few of the Congressmen. I did not edit the paper.
While it may be true that Fauci did not “edit” the “Proximal Origin” paper, lead author Kristian Andersen said he “prompted” it, and the authors sent him a final draft for approval.
In their private exchanges, the authors repeatedly refer to Collins and Fauci as the “Bethesda boys.” Their offices were located in Bethesda, Maryland.
The “Bethesda boys” appear to have directed some of the paper’s content. After Andersen suggested that a first draft should be sent “up the chain,” Fauci and Collins voiced concern that culturing or serial passaging (a process through which a virus can be made more infectious to humans) was still included as a possible origin.
Jeremy Farrar, head of the Wellcome Trust, then pressured the authors to remove it. Shortly after publishing the preprint, Holmes told Andersen, “Sorry the last bit had to be done without you… pressure from on high.” Fauci would go on to cite this paper as objective evidence from independent scientists.
All of this, and yet, throughout the Oversight Committee’s hearing, Democrats refused to provide oversight and criticized their colleagues who attempted to provide it. “I'm sorry for the personal attacks you have received and may have to deal with today,” said one. “Thank you, sir, and your entire team for saving lives in this country, and I'm sorry you have to continue going on with these attacks,” said another.
“The Republicans failed to find, uh, a shred of evidence of their far-fetched conspiracy linking Dr. Fauci to a cover-up of the origins of the pandemic,” said one. “Sir, do you think the American public should listen to America's brightest and best doctors and scientists? Or instead, listen to podcasters, conspiracy theorists, and unhinged Facebook memes,” asked another.
Since World War II, Democrats, liberals, and progressives have criticized their political enemies as overly deferent to authority. Today, at the hearing with Fauci and other hearings where mainstream science is questioned, they criticize their enemies for not being sufficiently deferent. What changed?
There are plainly partisan motivations behind Democrats’ overprotection of Fauci. They treat him as virtuous because he publicly criticized Trump for spreading misinformation in 2020 and has warned against right-wing “anti-vaxxers.” The Democratic Party is more aligned with unelected government employees like Fauci than the Republican Party is.
There are certainly financial motivations for this shift. Government employee unions are one of the Democratic Party’s main sources of campaign financing.
But beneath both partisanship and money lies deeply ideological and arguably religious motivations. Many Democrats treat Fauci reverentially and put him above criticism, in the same way people used to treat priests and religious figures, and not in the way scientists treat each other and should be treated, which is as fallible humans subject to questioning and criticism.
This is evident not just in relation to Covid origins but also the vaccines, which Fauci and Democrats continue to treat as sacred.
True science is a process, not a status hierarchy. It depends on disagreement and constant evaluation of new data, not efforts like those of the Democrats to enforce orthodoxy and shut down open dialogue in the name of “protecting science.”
We can support the enforcement of laws against issuing death threats and support not just freedom of speech but the necessity of government oversight. Demanding that government officials not be questioned and framing any questioning of them as abuse is a deeply authoritarian abuse of power.
The Congressional hearing today was a chilling reminder that some elected officials are far more concerned with maintaining state power, including by raising the specter of violence, than by having difficult conversations.
The following year, 2012, NIH’s biosecurity board signed non-disclosure agreements and met with Fauci and Collins. The board, apparently under pressure from Fauci and Collins, then revised its previous recommendation to publish the risky bird flu research.
According to Fauci and Democrats in Congress, NIH’s grant to EcoHealth Alliance did not fall under P3CO guidelines because it was not anticipated to increase a pathogen’s danger to humans, specifically.
But in emails, NIH staff expressed their concerns about EcoHealth Alliance’s work creating hybrid “chimera” MERS and SARS viruses, in order to increase their infectiousness, in 2016. NIH staff pointed out that there was a moratorium placed on that research in 2014.
Peter Daszak, the president of the EcoHealth Alliance, persuaded NIH staff to concede to a research threshold, saying EcoHealth would halt its research if the chimeras had enhanced viral growth 10 times that of the original viruses.
After reaching an agreement with NIH, Daszak specifically referred to this work as gain-of-function, writing, “This is terrific! We are very happy to hear that our Gain of Function research funding pause has been lifted. Cheers, Peter.”
Then, in 2018, EcoHealth went on to seemingly violate its agreement by producing a chimeric virus with a viral load 10,000 times greater than the original virus.
As such, Fauci, his colleagues, and the Democrats were playing word games, redefining what they mean by gain-of-function research in ways that allowed them to deny responsibility.
And that’s not all.
After the Obama administration had established a Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) committee to review proposed gain-of-function projects before the NIH could approve them, Fauci and Collins knowingly sought to make changes to NIH policy in order to allow funding for riskier gain-of-function experiments. These changes included removing the committee’s ability to block projects and limiting the type of projects the committee could review.
In his testimony, Fauci misrepresented the scientific possibility that NIH funding is associated with the Covid-19 outbreak, as well as his role in the “Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2” paper, which infamously and misleadingly, claimed that, “Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus.”
But consider how, in 2018, EcoHealth Alliance applied for a grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for a project called “DEFUSE” that would involve Shi Zhengli’s lab group at WIV and Ralph Bari
c’s lab at the University of North Carolina (UNC).
Documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act reveal that the features of SARS-CoV-2 closely resemble the work described in EcoHealth Alliance’s proposal.
On February 1, 2020, Fauci and Collins
held a meeting called “Coronavirus sequence comparison” with other scientists to compare the spike proteins of SARS-CoV-2 and RaTG13, its closest genetic relative which the NIH-funded Wuhan lab discovered. This meeting would lead to the “Proximal Origin” paper.
In the hearing, Fauci downplayed his role.
Majority Counsel Mitch Benzine:
Did Dr. Anderson send you drafts to review?
Fauci:
He sent drafts, but I'm going to jump ahead of you if I might dribble around. I did not edit it. That was mentioned by a few of the Congressmen. I did not edit the paper.
While it may be true that Fauci did not “edit” the “Proximal Origin” paper, lead author Kristian Andersen said he “prompted” it, and the authors sent him a final draft for approval.
In their private exchanges, the authors repeatedly refer to Collins and Fauci as the “Bethesda boys.” Their offices were located in Bethesda, Maryland.
The “Bethesda boys” appear to have directed some of the paper’s content. After Andersen suggested that a first draft should be sent “up the chain,” Fauci and Collins voiced concern that culturing or serial passaging (a process through which a virus can be made more infectious to humans) was still included as a possible origin.
Jeremy Farrar, head of the Wellcome Trust, then pressured the authors to remove it. Shortly after publishing the preprint, Holmes told Andersen, “Sorry the last bit had to be done without you… pressure from on high.” Fauci would go on to cite this paper as objective evidence from independent scientists.
All of this, and yet, throughout the Oversight Committee’s hearing, Democrats refused to provide oversight and criticized their colleagues who attempted to provide it. “I'm sorry for the personal attacks you have received and may have to deal with today,” said one. “Thank you, sir, and your entire team for saving lives in this country, and I'm sorry you have to continue going on with these attacks,” said another.
“The Republicans failed to find, uh, a shred of evidence of their far-fetched conspiracy linking Dr. Fauci to a cover-up of the origins of the pandemic,” said one. “Sir, do you think the American public should listen to America's brightest and best doctors and scientists? Or instead, listen to podcasters, conspiracy theorists, and unhinged Facebook memes,” asked another.
Since World War II, Democrats, liberals, and progressives have criticized their political enemies as overly deferent to authority. Today, at the hearing with Fauci and other hearings where mainstream science is questioned, they criticize their enemies for not being sufficiently deferent. What changed?
There are plainly partisan motivations behind Democrats’ overprotection of Fauci. They treat him as virtuous because he publicly criticized Trump for spreading misinformation in 2020 and has warned against right-wing “anti-vaxxers.” The Democratic Party is more aligned with unelected government employees like Fauci than the Republican Party is.
There are certainly financial motivations for this shift. Government employee unions are one of the Democratic Party’s main sources of campaign financing.
But beneath both partisanship and money lies deeply ideological and arguably religious motivations. Many Democrats treat Fauci reverentially and put him above criticism, in the same way people used to treat priests and religious figures, and not in the way scientists treat each other and should be treated, which is as fallible humans subject to questioning and criticism.
This is evident not just in relation to Covid origins but also the vaccines, which Fauci and Democrats continue to treat as sacred.
True science is a process, not a status hierarchy. It depends on disagreement and constant evaluation of new data, not efforts like those of the Democrats to enforce orthodoxy and shut down open dialogue in the name of “protecting science.”
We can support the enforcement of laws against issuing death threats and support not just freedom of speech but the necessity of government oversight. Demanding that government officials not be questioned and framing any questioning of them as abuse is a deeply authoritarian abuse of power.
The Congressional hearing today was a chilling reminder that some elected officials are far more concerned with maintaining state power, including by raising the specter of violence, than by having difficult conversations.
Hüsker Dü
DA
You do know that many hate groups used the protests to push their views and beat up Jewish kids right? There is video and investigative reporting showing many outside agitators some middle aged men with long histories of violent anti-Semitism and yes, images of them at trump rallies.
Happened again
SILVER ELITE
I don't quite get why you feel you have to qualify anti-Semitism. It's quite cringeworthy that you throw trumpy's name at everything. Many universities have become (or always were) havens of anti-Semitism - mainly via their staffs, who poison/use the kids. It's out in the open now and openly endorsed by, mainly by the side you've chosen to align with. The idea that you would even attempt to mask up the sentiment by hanging your hat on your orange demon is quite ridiculous.
Happened again
SILVER ELITE
with you? nope, not at all. orange isn't my color and rent free isn't an option.
I often wondered what was behind Epoch Times --
I've heard those claims. It wouldn't surprise me. Why wouldn't they piggy-back on widespread mass anti-Semitic protests, when they can only generate small crowds at best.